Let's Panic

At LET'S PANIC ABOUT BABIES, Eden Kennedy and I share our hard-won wisdom and tell you exactly what to think and feel and do, whether you're about to have a baby or already did and don't know what to do with it.

The Universe is, apparently, telling me to be quiet. If I believed in astrology I'd observe that Articulus, the Star that Controls Verbiage, is in retrograde, which explains the problems I'm having. Then I'd do those flying-yogi jumps out of the room, and you and all your buddies would roll your eyes at each other, like you always do. Boy are you guys judgmental. Like you've never read your horoscope! I've seen your dog-eared copy of Linda Goodman's Love Signs in your bathroom. Sure you were reading it ironically. I believe that. Guess who's rolling her eyes now? WRONG IT'S ME.

As I was saying. So first my computer broke, AGAIN, which should not have come as a surprise because for weeks it's been making alarming noises, the kinds of sounds that computers have not made since the '80s, when our hard drives were 32K big and made out of squirrel meat. My fancy computer of the present was going chickety-chickety and tch-tch-tch and I ignored it. And then over the weekend it lapsed into a coma, and Scott took it and lectured me AGAIN about eating while I worked, as if the few (okay, many) crumbs on the keyboard caused its innards to fail, and now he's at the Apple Store with my computer and I'm here with his. But his settings are all weird and wrong and also none of my stuff is on his computer, which is also weird, plus wrong. And okay I bought myself an iPad (I needed it for travel! Something something else rationalization!) but none of my files are on it and it's weird to transition the iPad from cool movie-watching fun-having-on to serious work technology. So that's communication problem #1.

#2 is that my jaw hurts and I can't talk. Yesterday I found it increasingly difficult to eat dinner. I was enjoying the slow-cooked pot roast I had made but was alarmed at how painful eating it was. With each bite, I found it harder to open my mouth. I was forcing the tines between my teeth and crying out piteously. But it was so delicious! I had to soldier on! By the end of the night I was talking like someone with lockjaw. (Have you guys ever heard of Locust Valley Lockjaw? (You can Wikipedia that yourself, right? Must I provide a URL for you?) Which I believe was written about in the Preppy handbook? Listen, I went to high school in Locust Valley, and I'm here to tell you it's real. I had friends whose parents talked like Thurston Howell. And I'm talking like them, clenched jaw and all. I feel like complaining about Muffy's poor behavior at the Creek Club, and how her husband Chip--you know Chip from Yale, I suspect--WELL, he was mortified, simply mortified and he swore he'd never let her have a second Tanqueray and tonic no matter how she begged.)

My jaw's had a disturbing tendency to go off the rails ever since I got into a car accident in college and suffered a mild concussion (for weeks afterward I couldn't remember which number came after 5) and also my jaw got knocked out of place. So now it complains whenever I eat bagels or salad, and it opens at a weird angle, which I thought you couldn't really see but watching several Momversation episodes has convinced me otherwise. I am betting you have never noticed because you haven't studied my jaw movements. Not yet, anyway.

This post is going nowhere. I don't care, I'm putting it up. This is the best I've got. Our book comes out MONDAY TUESDAY and my jaw's gone funny and I'm afraid I lost valuable documents and I had to turn my shrimp and red pepper curry into SOUP in order to eat it. SOUP!